Dawn’s Chorus of Flesh
There is no shame in desire, only in denying it.
Camping in the Woods – Day 3
Our second day ended with a marvelous swim in the Paluxy river adjacent to ancient fossilized dinosaur tracks. Most bigger than a head and several would contain a whole person. The day, the heat and the swim left us ready to a long night’s sleep. And the natural world serenaded me to a deep slumber filled with dreams of faraway places and old friends.
Day three started unexpectedly in the middle of the night. Waking at 3am I felt as if I’d been asleep for weeks, not hours. The moon was high overhead, waning gibbous but still clear and bright though the shadowed branches shattered it’s disc like glass.
The night sounds that serenaded and sedated me so completely now gave me chills to hear such beauty. The rustle of the leaves in a gentle breeze, distant croaking frogs chanting back and forth and a harmony of crickets that was already beginning to ease after a night of diligent song. The predawn hours of the 4th watch were tired ones, but far too mesmerizing to be missed.
Something shuffled softly in the leaves outside my gossamer shroud followed by the warm hush of a tent zipper being pulled.
Materializing like a vapor through the doorway, a beautiful apparition whispers to me in the din of night. 'Can I lay with you, dear one?'
“Yes,” I answer, “but only if you make passionate love to me.”
“Very well. But now? It is the early morning. Can we not stay it for another time?”
“It is morning and your Faerie King greatly desires it.”
She smiles at me while gently tugging at the zipper. “Well, King, the Queen is the real power behind the throne, so how about we negotiate it to warm cuddles for a while.”
“Very well, then let us call it foreplay. Come, my love my pallet is here spread upon the softest of ground.”
And it is an incredibly comfortable spot. The earth beneath feels freshly tilled and has the quality of loamy soil, ready for seed. It is pliant and yielding for tired bodies.
We entwine, we two, in a warm embrace against the cold of the early hours. Whispers, small kisses and gentle caresses give way to the warm glow in the low of my back. The heat of her body sending unheard thermal signals to mine, which responds eagerly. The relaxed nuzzles and whispers soon turn to urgency and gasps, as desire flowers into a consuming flame.
As the sun flashes its predawn brilliance and rises over the trees, we move with the rhythm of life and glow together. Flesh and spirit entwined, the act itself becomes a prayer of thanksgiving—a prayer whispered one to the other, and both to the Creator. And if the sun should fail in this moment, we have sustained our own furnace of life in our nest in the woods.
Our cries must be swallowed, lest the neighbors hear and blush. Yet in our hushed effort, there is thunder. Why should the thunder of love be hidden? Strange that the most intimate of acts is the one we silence behind closed lips. We devour food openly, toast drink with abandon, but in the act where we become one, we bury our voices in pillows.
It is life. Should not the whole of the forest be filled with cries and groans in the early hours? A chorus of of carnal bliss going up to the Creator who designed and gave us this capacity. To enter. To be entered. To know the deepest physical connection we can share.
A beautiful joy! Why do we act so timid and afraid of the act of making love? Who made us feel ashamed of it, an act from which we cower and shrink? How tragic that we sever sex from holiness, tuck it away, treat it as dirty.
We are not so timid about eat and drink. Is coitus no less required of humanity? Oh, perhaps without it we will not die in 3 minutes, or 3 days. Indeed 3 months is perfectly (though not enjoyably) doable. There are those who live virginal lives, in fact. It is they who should be celebrated. To never know the electric touch of another? That moment of combustion when the universe begins anew—and in billions of cases, a universe does begin when a life is sparked.
A new human made from passion of two people. Man and woman, connected so deeply they can never be separated short of death. For once a child is born, those two are bound in an inseparable bond. Jehovah says a man and woman become one flesh, closer than any human connection. And to sever that is simply impossible.
Many countless couples have gone on to live separate lives, but they always remain in some small way, a part of the other. And the child is the physical manifestation of that bond.
How beautiful that in the rhythm of life, as the moon and the sun watch in this early hour, we join together without shame. Throwing off the gentle quite of decorum and the quilts that shield our bodies. Quilts no longer needed for warmth. Only our diaphanous covering separates us from the edge of the universe.
The spiders all cheer and shake the dew-laden webs in the branches above and the crickets redouble their efforts to serenade as we crescendo our passions. They lead the the halo of forest creatures who cuddle and nuzzle and more in their own nests. All of Jehovah's creatures this morning, it seems are thanking Him through engagement of this glorious gift.
Collapsing next to each other, I stroke her hair and press it behind her ear as her deep brown eyes glisten and twinkle. In moments the lids droop and shield those amber disks while her breathing slows to a steady rhythm and the sandman captures her once more.
Tonight will not result in a new life, just the celebration of ours. And my appreciation for the gift is refreshed. This intimacy in the woods revealed to me that lovemaking, far from something to be hushed, is one of the purest ways to honor creation. The act itself, a form of prayer.
And as I too slip into repose, I whisper a single word:
“Amen.”
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Thank you for coming here and walking through the garden of my mind. No day is as brilliant in its moment as it is gilded in memory. Embrace your experience and relish gorgeous recollection.
Into every life a little light will shine. Thank you for being my luminance in whatever capacity you may. Shine on, you brilliant souls!
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